Maniaci, Michael

This study applies the Response Escalation Paradigm (REP) to examine jealousy scores across five stages of increasing relationship threat (Huelsnitz et al., 2018). Participants rated their jealousy in scenarios involving a romantic partner with either a human or AI rival in virtual reality (VR), among other conditions. Consistent with hypothesis 1, jealousy rates increased across the stages in each condition. Consistent with hypothesis 2, people reported higher jealousy for the human rival in VR compared to the AI rival in VR at Stage 1. Inconsistent with hypothesis 3, participants did not experience faster escalation (the rate of increase in jealousy as the level of threat increases across the scenarios) for the human rival in VR relative to the AI rival in VR. Exploratory analyses did not reveal significant gender differences in jealousy responses. Overall, results indicate that individuals feel jealous about AI rivals as they do with human rivals.

Previous research has demonstrated the harmful impacts of adverse childhood circumstances on adult romantic relationships. The current study examines the negative influence of childhood unpredictability on adult relationships and how this effect may be buffered and enhanced, respectively, by cognitive ability and Machiavellianism. A total of 256 participants completed measures of childhood unpredictability, Machiavellianism, cognitive ability, and relationship satisfaction. Individuals who experienced childhood unpredictability reported lower adult romantic relationship satisfaction. Machiavellianism was found to significantly enhance the negative effects of childhood unpredictability on adult relationships for men only. Cognitive ability was not a significant moderator.

John Gottman’s mathematical models have been shown to accurately predict a couple’s style of interaction using only the sentiments found in the couple’s conversations. I derived speaker sentiment slopes from 151 recorded dyadic audio conversations from the IEMOCAP dataset through an IBM Watson emotion recognition pipeline and assessed its accuracy as input for a Gottman model by comparing the cumulative speaker sentiment slope for each conversation produced from predicted emotion codes to that produced from groundtruth codes provided by IEMOCAP. Watson produced sentiment slopes strongly correlated with those produced by groundtruth emotion codes. An abbreviated pipeline was also assessed consisting just of the Watson textual emotion recognition model using IEMOCAP’s human transcriptions as input. It produced predicted sentiment slopes very strongly correlated with those produced by groundtruth. The research demonstrated that artificial intelligence has potential to be used to predict interaction quality from short samples of conversational data.

We examined how adult attachment styles influence human perception of support provision. We invited 119 couples to the lab, where they performed an exploration task. We also used pre- and post-exploration measures, including assessing adult attachment styles and partners' perception of support provided during the task. Three independent coders watched the videos of couples interacting and rated partners' support provision behavior. We utilized West and Kenny's (2011) truth and bias model to compare judgments (partners' perception of support received during the exploration task) with so-defined truth (combined rankings from coders). We used regression analysis to investigate how attachment orientation moderates the perception of support provision. On average, individuals tended to over-perceive helpfulness and under-perceive intrusiveness. Attachment avoidance was not a significant predictor of directional bias for helpfulness and intrusiveness. Results for the second exploratory hypothesis show those higher on attachment anxiety to have a weaker bias in underperceiving intrusiveness.

Loneliness is defined as perceived social isolation. Previous research has identified several predictors of chronic loneliness, such as poor self-reported health and living alone. However, the predictors of daily fluctuations in transient experiences of loneliness have not been closely examined. For one week, 200 participants were asked to complete a daily diary survey about their social interactions and loneliness each night. Consistent with predictions, participants reported feeling lonelier on days with less time interacting with others and with poorer quality social interaction. The effect of time spent interacting with others on daily loneliness was stronger for participants higher in chronic loneliness. Supplemental analyses showed that participants felt less lonely on days of the weekend and that additional hours of interaction were more effective in reducing daily loneliness for older adults than younger adults. Examining this differential response in daily loneliness to interaction quality and quantity could inform future interventions.

The current studies examined the interplay of dominance and power in their effects on various forms of prosociality, along with potential mechanisms that may account for their differential effects. Study 1 found that dominance and power had opposing effects on general prosocial tendencies, with dominance negatively relating to and power positively relating to general prosociality. Study 2 found the negative effects of dominance to be consistent both for general and relationship-specific prosociality. The effects of power were not replicated for the outcomes shared with Study 1, but other positive associations were found between power and prosocial propensities. Indirect effects in studies 1 and 2 supported the potential mediating role of other focus in explaining the differential effects of dominance and power. Study 3 utilized an experimental design to directly examine the potential mediating role of other-focus, by manipulating independent versus interdependent self-construals. Significant interactions between power and condition supported the notion that power positively affects prosociality by increasing other-focus. In the interdependent condition, power significantly predicted perspective-taking, whereas in the independent condition, the effect of power on perspective-taking was not significant. Study 4 involved collecting dyadic data from romantic partners, but did not find any significant partner effects. In line with the other studies, dominance was negatively associated with self-reported supportive tendencies as well as self-reported perceptions of a partner’s supportive behaviors.

Three studies examined the effects of benevolent sexism and gender on support
provision and relationship functioning across multiple contexts. Benevolent sexism refers
to sexist attitudes towards women that are seemingly positive, but still stereotypical
(Glick & Fiske, 1996). Study 1 examined benevolent sexism and dependency-oriented
support in friendships by asking participants how they would respond to either a female
or male acquaintance in hypothetical helping scenarios. Study 2 examined benevolent
sexism and secure base support among individuals in heterosexual romantic relationships
using an Internet-based survey. Secure base support differs from other forms of support
in that it is not provided in order to help someone cope with adversity, but rather involves
supporting a partner’s exploration or personal goal pursuit in non-adverse scenarios.
Study 3 used behavioral observation to examine benevolent sexism and secure base
support among romantic couples participating in a videotaped exploration task. Multiple regression and dyadic analyses were conducted to test for interactions between gender,
benevolent sexism, and support provision. In both men and women in Study 1,
benevolent sexism was associated with an increased likelihood of providing dependencyoriented
help towards others, suggesting that men are not the only ones providing
dependency-oriented support to women. However, men were more likely than women to
provide dependency-oriented help towards women, regardless of their degree of
benevolent sexism. In Studies 2 and 3, there were no significant main effects of
benevolent sexism or gender on secure base support. In Study 2, women higher in
benevolent sexism reported being more interfering towards their male partner’s goal
pursuit, suggesting that benevolent sexism may be harmful to men as well. In Study 3,
women reported lower feelings of competence during the exploration task than men. For
individuals with partners high in benevolent sexism, gender moderated their feelings of
competence. Women with male partners high in benevolent sexism reported lower
feelings of competence, whereas men with female partners high in benevolent sexism
reported higher feelings of competence. The mixed results suggest that the effects of
benevolent sexism on support exchanges may be more complex than current theoretical
perspectives imply.

In some cases, as much as 9% of participants in self-report studies are extremely
inattentive (Maniaci & Rogge, 2014). Previous researchers have dealt with this problem
by removing inattentive participants from data analyses. A better solution would be to
prevent inattentive responding. Self-Determination Theory may provide an effective
approach to reducing inattentive responding, specifically by attempting to promote
autonomous motivation in research participants. Providing participants with personalized
feedback may increase participants’ autonomous motivation, which in turn may lead to
more attentive responding. Study 1 showed that participants who are interested in
feedback are more attentive throughout an online survey than participants who are not
interested in feedback. The next goal was to show through experimental manipulation
that emphasizing the opportunity to receive personalized feedback would decrease levels
of inattentive responding and increase autonomous motivation. No significant difference
occurred between groups in levels of inattention, nor in autonomous motivation.

Inattentive responding by research participants may decrease the reliability and validity of self-report measures. The current studies broaden the record of personality traits correlated with inattention by examining individual differences in attachment anxiety and avoidance among adults in romantic relationships. Based upon the characteristics typically exhibited by adults high on attachment avoidance, I expected an overlap between this personality trait and inattention, such that participants higher on attachment avoidance would exhibit higher levels of inattentive responding when answering self-report questions about their relationship. Two studies addressed this hypothesis using both self-report data from individuals and partner-report data from romantic couples to examine the association between a participant’s attachment avoidance and their level of inattentive responding while participating in research focusing on their romantic relationships. Self-reported attachment avoidance was associated with greater inattentive responding in both studies. However, partner-reported attachment avoidance was not significantly associated with inattentive responding in Study 2.

The current research investigated the effects of competition on empathy and
prosociality in two studies. Study 1 aimed to explore associations between competition
and prosociality by asking participants to play a computer puzzle game that was either
high or low on competitiveness, and then to complete measures of empathy, perspective
taking, compassionate love and willingness to sacrifice for a romantic partner. Study 1
found a marginally significant difference across conditions for perspective taking, a
marginally significant gender interaction for perspective taking, and a significant gender
by condition interaction for compassionate love, in support of hypotheses that
competition reduces prosocial responses in men. Study 2 addressed methodological
limitations from Study 1 and examined the effect across a broader range of relationship
contexts, including close friends. Results for Study 2 did not replicate the marginally significant effect for perspective taking seen in Study 1, but found a significant
interaction between gender and condition predicting perspective taking. Significant
findings in line with prior research emerged for dominance and commitment, indicating
that higher dominance and lower commitment were associated with less empathy and
prosociality. Overall, results do not consistently support the hypothesized effect of
competitive situations on prosocial and empathic behavior, although results of
exploratory analyses suggest potential moderated or conditional effects.